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Snowden Leaves Hong Kong on Commercial Flight to Moscow
- alexqgb 13y agoSeems like this is where his carefully considered plan gets much more improvisational. Bad optics, just the same - even if he is on his way to Iceland.
- LinaLauneBaer 13y agoWhy is Iceland such a bad idea?
- alexqgb 13y agoIceland's fine. It's going via Moscow that's the problem, at least in terms of the surrounding debate. It'll give a lot more ammunition to the "he betrayed his country" people, which won't be good for the exceedingly overdue conversation we were starting to have about secrecy and surveillance.
- sliverstorm 13y agoYup. I'd say Russia is probably third on the list of worst places he could go, after defecting to China and Iran, in that order.
- dclowd9901 13y agoMy guess is that Iceland would probably bend to the US's will pretty easily, especially over such a high profile individual.
- rosser 13y agoI'm not so sure. Consider the case of Birgitta Jónsdóttir.
- insuffi 13y agoIt always puzzles me how people, especially citizens of Murrica think everyone will bend over and let U.S. have their way. Small countries? Maybe. See case of latvian hacker Deniss Calovskis http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/23/u-s-charges-three-with-hacking/?_r=0 http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/23/u-s-charges-three-w... Now Latvia is widely regarded as a country that will definitely follow US's whistle. And this extradition case has been going on for, eh, 9 months now? Think about what independent and "ballsy" countries will do.
- mh- 13y agohis fellow passengers are going to be rather annoyed if he causes this flight to be detained on the tarmac for hours.
- samstave 13y agoor suffer "mechanical failure"
- hkmurakami 13y agoidk, I'd probably happily put up with it if I knew that the hold up was Snowden related. Then again, I doubt that'd be made public in the aircraft.
- peterjancelis 13y agoActually it would be awesome to sit next to Snowden on this flight.
- gasull 13y agoI wish Snowden good luck, but I wouldn't like to be in the same flight with him. I would be that such flight would have a higher risk of "an accident".
- enko 13y agoMan, how times have changed. I was born in the 70s and the US was the country you would run to to escape retribution for whistleblowing you did back home. (†) For Snowden to be running to Russia to escape extradition from Hong Kong (!) is just fucking bizarro world for me. It is actually quite jarring. I don't trust Russia at all. But even thinking about it forces one to ask whether one trusts the USA. The answer to that is pretty jarring, too. (†) I'm not making a right/wrong judgement about his actions. He blew a whistle, a whistle he thought needed to be blown. In my opinion that is a necessary check on state power and is a defence in and of itself.
- necubi 13y agoReally, they haven't. Daniel Ellsberg, the leaker of the Pentagon Papers (1971), was also also charged with espionage. In his case all the charges against him were dismissed. Not, to be clear, because of any contriteness on Nixon's part. Instead, it was because the government was found to have illegally bugged his phone and broken into the office of his psychiatrist in order to find material with which to discredit him. Several of those involved were later convicted as part of the watergate trials [0]. If you think things were better in the 70s, you really weren't paying attention. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ellsberg#Trial_and_mistrial http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ellsberg#Trial_and_mistr...
- samstave 13y ago>"because the government was found to have illegally bugged his phone and broken into the office of his psychiatrist Can this not be actual legal precedence AGAINST the entire NSA debacle to begin with? Seriously, can an IAMAL comment on if this could be used?
- rosser 13y agoIANAL. My understanding of how these things work, however, is that the case against Ellsberg was dismissed by the trial judge, and therefore does not establish any precedent. If he'd been convicted, and the conviction overturned on appeal (and the conviction's having been overturned was upheld in any appeals thereof), then precedent would have been created. The reason it works this way is that trial courts are venues for finding facts, while appellate courts are vehicles for addressing questions of law surrounding those findings of fact. It's how those questions of law are resolved, so-called "case law", that creates precedents. IANAL; corrections welcome.
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- rosser 13y agoHe's not going to Russia; he's going through Russia. TFA's second sentence: It is understood the fugitive whistle-blower boarded the Moscow-bound flight earlier on Sunday and will continue to another country.
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- fleitz 13y agoIn the modern era you can't really hide so he might as well be as public about it as you can be. Russia is definitely an interesting move, and Putin has been playing the whole thing very smart. I wonder what he knows that the Russians don't, or what they can now reveal having found out through Snowden rather than the usual sources. It seems to me the value in Snowden is mostly making public what everyone already knew.
- hkmurakami 13y ago>It seems to me the value in Snowden is mostly making public what everyone already knew. There must be some value to be able to say "no, look at these" to those who would have just cried "conspiracy theory" and then laughed in your face.
- enko 13y ago> making public what everyone already knew I can't find a link, but there has been a "meme" graphic going around with, I think, a very insightful caption. For years, you go around trying to raise the alarm, and you're a crazy conspiracy theorist. Then when you finally get conclusive proof - it's old news, everyone knows, you've been saying it for years!
- samstave 13y agoEschelonitis
- Andrew_Quentin 13y agoWelcome to rhetorics 101
- hkmurakami 13y ago>Moscow will not be his final destination. Possible final destinations are either Iceland and Ecuador, according to previous media reports. I first thought that Ecuador would be more likely, since had Iceland been his final destination, he probably would have taken the Icelandic businessman's offer to hire him a chartered flight. But then I realized that perhaps Snowden places more trust in a commercial flight and not being detained in Moscow than a stranger's chartered flight which could potentially backstab him and hand him over to US authorities.
- samstave 13y agoOr, he could have bought the ticket to moscow and went to HKG with the ticket to board the commercial flight to Ecuador via moscow and then boarded the private plane to KEF (unlikely - but fun to think about)
- mtgx 13y agoIceland hasn't exactly been very vocal about supporting him, so Ecuador might be the best choice. Russia I think was pretty vocal, but maybe they just wanted to make fun of US, and aren't really serious about protecting Snowden. Plus, they support US's surveillance state, so there's little reason why they'd want to protect him, other than being vengeful against US for whatever reason. Ecuador so far has been pretty good for Assange, and they might continue to want to be seen as "the country that stood up to US", but nobody really knows how far they are willing to go to do that. At least Assange hasn't even been charged with anything by US, yet.
- _k 13y agoPutin didn't really say they support the US's surveillance state, he said surveillance is necessary but you need a warrant.
- lostlogin 13y agoYeah, careful with that guy. A lot of people who didn't get on with him seem to die in strange ways. But don't talk about it - especially not Pussy Riot style as dissent isn't ok.
- nsns 13y agoNot only his leaks, even his itinerary makes the US look bad.
- mtgx 13y agoRepublican media: "Now he's aiding all the enemies, not just China!" Because in their minds China and others are actual "enemies".
- joelrunyon 13y agoYou could have just left this at 'american media'
- mahmud 13y agoNope, it's just GOP media, GOP executive branch, GOP congress that are behind the largest crackdown on whistle-blowers in U.S. history~
- omni_ 13y agoDon't for a second think this is a partisan issue. There are just as many liberal media organizations doing this type of reporting on Snowden.
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- PavlovsCat 13y agoIf you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. I might agree that this may not apply to all threads about this subject. But it also doesn't apply to so many things that are regularly posted here and nobody ever hears a peep about, often minor iteration of some shallow cosmetic "technology", and generally ads thinly veiled under bad writing. I mean, if the standards are that low, why not simply declare that humans are biological machines, and therefore all human interest stories are technology stories? But don't pretend there is consistency and actual adherence to the guidelines, I just don't see it. Maybe the problem is that it would require us first to define "good hacker". What is that? I'm thinking of the Chaos Computer Club guys, or Cult of the Dead Cow, not of Silicon Valley. But surely that isn't it, so what is it...? I would love to see a "main section" restricted to big ideas or questions, instead of news of the day, something that strictly tries to adhere to those guidelines -- but I would still want to have an area where we can discuss Snowden, or some random thing that existed for ages predictably being converted to js now, in a format that is purely focused on the words, and with people that are generally extremely smart. And if we can't do it here, I wish we could make that place, instead of just shutting up whenever it gets remotely serious.
- h4pless 13y agoThanks for the reply and sorry for deleting the original comment. At the time I was getting down-voted without any feedback so I figured it worthless to keep it. But to your comment, I completely agree.
- PavlovsCat 13y agoFor what it's worth, I actually wanted to upvote you, because I don't like all this silent downvoting business either.. but by the time I had finished writing my reply, it was already gone. Anyway, cheers :)
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- uvdiv 13y agoThis is strange, because there are no scheduled nonstop flights between Moscow (any airport) and Iceland. There are flights which make a connection in Europe, e.g. Helsinki, but then there are already nonstop flights to Helsinki from Hong Kong, so what does he gain from an additional landing in Moscow? (Assuming Iceland is where he is trying to go). http://matrix.itasoftware.com/ http://matrix.itasoftware.com/ http://flightaware.com http://flightaware.com (Note that the hub in Iceland is Keflavík (KEF), not Reykjavík (RKV) which mostly does domestic).
- IvyMike 13y agoPossible private plane arrangements? Also: He might have had to get on a plane IMMEDIATELY which probably limited his choices.
- Kudos 13y agoIs Iceland definitely his final destination?
- uvdiv 13y agoNo. Nothing has been reported that claims it is definite.
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- uvdiv 13y agoI edited my comment to include all of Moscow's airports, not only SVO. Although transferring airports, meaning going through Russia's border police and entering that country, seems an even stranger idea.
- Svip 13y agoFurthermore, in Russia, he will have to go to the Danish embassy or consulate to get asylum in Iceland. I am not sure how this helps or disadvantages him, but I thought I'd mention that Iceland themselves don't have an embassy/consulate in Russia, but is represented by Denmark.
- lignuist 13y agoFor those who want to hypothesize: Here you can check the departures from Moskow after 17:15h http://svo.aero/en/timetable/today/ http://svo.aero/en/timetable/today/ I think destinations in Russia, EU and Asia can be safely filtered out.
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- weinzierl 13y agoThis is only for Sheremetyevo, at least Domodedovo also has international connections.
- lignuist 13y agoYes, but his plane arrives at Sheremetyevo. However, he could still go to Domodevo, but this might be risky for him. Maybe he talked to Russian representatives before flying to Russia. This might buy him a few days.
- Irishsteve 13y agoI'm not sure which is a worse fate, spending eternity in guantanamo bay, or spending an eternity in moscow traffic
- pivnicek 13y agoThanks for that link. Seem to be a few flights out to Havana. That would be an interesting destination.
- uvdiv 13y agoWe'll at least he'd be safe from NSA spying there, seeing as the whole island is air-gapped.
- CurtMonash 13y agoI'd be happier if he weren't putting himself under the control of governments that can reasonably be regarded as US adversaries. Thus, I'm with Assange that Ecuador or something was the way for Snowden to go. Yes, there would be a risk to him of regime change in any such place, but so be it ...
- DominikR 13y agoI'd like to see what your actions would have been if you were facing life in prison under solitary confinement like Bradley Manning does (or even worse - torture & execution) Any government that isn't a US adversary would surely extradite him, so it seems reasonable to me that he was in China and now travels through Russia. Chinese dissidents do the same thing, they flee to Chinese adversaries (like the US)
- insuffi 13y agoYou mean reasonably regard as adversaries based on what you hear on the TV spouting pro-american propaganda. Who cares, honestly. Nobody's going to try and extract secrets from him. 1) he's clearly a true patriot 2) if he were to suddenly disappear in some "enemy" country, it would surely create huge public uproar. It's all public now. 3) As the comment above said it - the only ones that can fight the us are, mostly, its adversaries and truly independent countries.
- CurtMonash 13y agoYep. Since I put that comment up, the news has suggested he's doing the right thing after all. China & Russia don't seem to have a better play here than letting him in and out fast enough to make it clear he didn't have to spill secrets to them in private conversation in return for aid -- thus preserving his credibility to generally embarrass US intelligence.
- spitx 13y agoLet's not get cute here. If the United States wanted him extracted (on the way to Hong Kong) or worse, killed during his sojourn in HK, Snowden would have already faced a fate several orders worse than Alexander V. Litvinenko. It isn't a huge tab for the U.S. to foot in the way of deploying deep cover teams to "take care" of Snowden - for what had been alleged to be the biggest U.S. intelligence leak in a generation - in the least suspicion-arousing manner long before Greenwald ever published his story. For a nation that outspends the next ten defense budgets combined (even with the off late sequestration cuts accounted for) this is not much of a task. The top brass could have taken care of this in a manner several orders more believable than the 2006 killing of Alexander V. Litvinenko in which the uber rare, and thus strictly available to only government bodies, Polonium-210 was used. They could have made it seem like a forlorn affair of unrequited love with that dancer-acrobat girlfriend of his. It is acutely nonsensical to assume that movements of sensitive personnel, like Snowden, are not tracked, especially to far-flung locations like HK given that he is not a field operative of any kind. The NSA and other assorted intelligence/military organizations probably have a protocol for dealing with these things,in conjunction with the Justice department. If they didn't before, Manning's case would have elicited the need for one. Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/03/world/europe/03russian.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/03/world/europe/03russian.htm... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Alexander_Litvinenko http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Alexander_Litvinen... http://nation.time.com/2012/09/25/comparing-defense-budgets-apples-to-apples/ http://nation.time.com/2012/09/25/comparing-defense-budgets-... http://www.forensicmag.com/articles/2009/06/polonium-210-and-assassination-alexander-litvinenko#.Uca0-zvs3N4 http://www.forensicmag.com/articles/2009/06/polonium-210-and... http://www.buzzfeed.com/mbvd/this-might-be-the-girlfriend-edward-snowden-left-behind http://www.buzzfeed.com/mbvd/this-might-be-the-girlfriend-ed...
- jamespo 13y agoThey want him extradited, they don't want him killed so I'm not sure how the rest of your comment about a different government's actions is relevant.
- declan 13y agoYour suggestions are far too cute, actually. By going public, and periodically reminding everyone that he could be targeted for assassination, Snowden has created a strong incentive for FedGov to keep him very much alive.
- epo 13y agoThis story is part of the ongoing propaganda war between the USA and China. The only thing we know for certain is that the Chinese say he has boarded a plane to Moscow, he may or may not have done. He may or may not still be alive. The Chinese may even have secretly handed him back to the Americans. We don't know and it is probably best to be sceptical about everything you read until a journalist and film crew meets him face to face.
- joelrunyon 13y agoIt seems he's definitely left HK - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5926668 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5926668
- h4pless 13y agoSnowden running is not something to be confused with an admission of guilt, but at the same time, it does prove that he is not a patriot. With his worldwide recognition: the safest course would be for him to publicly turn himself in to a US police station or deliver himself to a courtroom. He would have a very public trial and would have an even farther reaching message in this country. By running he shows that he has no faith in this country and no longer considers himself a citizen. Not only that but he opens himself up to a ridiculous amount of risk by being wide open in foreign countries where things are semi-expected to happen to travelers by this country. If something happens to him while he's in the legal system of this country, the people responsible for him would be crucified by the media and everyone else. Granted he could be silenced and have his reputation destroyed by the media while incarcerated in this country but I believe a patriot works with the system or fights within it, only a coward runs.
- infinity0 13y ago爱国不爱党 loving one's country is not the same as loving one's government.
- h4pless 13y agoThanks for the reply. I appreciate feedback over a superficial down-vote. However I don't understand how I suggested that being a patriot is loving one's government.
- infinity0 13y agoI didn't down-vote you, I'm too new for that. :p (edit: not that I would have down-voted you, I agree with the comment in your other thread that this silent down-voting is harmful) You suggested that in order to be patriotic he should have stayed behind to face justice, administered by the same government whose "checks and balances" have so far failed to prevent the thing he's protesting. Why take his chances? Would you call a Chinese dissident unpatriotic for leaving China? (perhaps I should have given a more specific translation rather than a literal one, you can read "trusting the government" instead of "loving". short Chinese phrases have a lot of leeway in meaning which is usually implied from the context)
- cinquemb 13y ago“As the HKSAR government has yet to have sufficient information to process the request for provisional warrant of arrest, there is no legal basis to restrict Mr Snowden from leaving Hong Kong.” I think Washington will wake up with a bitter taste in their mouths…
- wilfra 13y agoAfter he spent the last two weeks releasing info that helped both Hong Kong and China - I don't think they'll be all that surprise he was granted the ability to leave the country.
- RexRollman 13y agoHe also released info that helped US citizens, as we are being kept in the dark in regards to the country's unconstitutional surveillance programs.
- colin_jack 13y agoPeople interested in this might also want to read the Guardians latest GCHQ revelations. Worryingly they seem to have been gathering more data and there is an interesting section on NSA involvement. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5926608 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5926608
- rlwolfcastle 13y agoNot sure why he just didn't go to China initially and then use the Phoenix to fly wherever he wanted?
- Dosenpfand 13y agoIt seems that he got help from Wikileaks' legal team: >FLASH: WikiLeaks has assisted Mr. Snowden's political asylum in a democratic country, travel papers ans safe exit from Hong Kong. More soon. https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/348724514135347200 https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/348724514135347200 >FLASH: Mr. Snowden is currently over Russian airspace accompanied by WikiLeaks legal advisors. https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/348732325909102593 https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/348732325909102593
- cmdkeen 13y agoWikileaks legal advisers - he's flying to a country that is putting a dead whistleblower on trial in order to demonise him and cover up government corruption. Relying on the legal process in Russia is a really good way to find out how different it is from America, however much certain people would like to think differently. Because that dead whistleblower - he was a lawyer.
- Lucadg 13y agoWikiLeaks (@wikileaks) tweeted at 11:20am - 23 Jun 13: FLASH: Mr. Snowden is currently over Russian airspace accompanied by WikiLeaks legal advisors. (https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/348732325909102593 https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/348732325909102593) Edit: Oops sorry, somebody posted this already. Anyway, interesting news!
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- dschiptsov 13y agoNever heard that we've implemented visa-on-arrival scheme.)
- nzmsv 13y agoNo visa necessary if he doesn't leave the airport and gets on another flight within 24 hours.
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- oal 13y agoThe flight can be followed in real time on FlightRadar24: http://fr24.com/AFL213 http://fr24.com/AFL213
- jafaku 13y agoCool website. This is what I see: http://i.imm.io/1a7pX.jpeg http://i.imm.io/1a7pX.jpeg
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- brown9-2 13y agoDidn't he say that he intended to fight any extradition in the HK courts?
- WeirdSemantics 13y agoImho, given the publicity of the issue, there's no way the current US judicial system could find Snowden guilty of treason without creating a huge domestic and international scandal. Politically, this would turn into an enormous backlash. To maintain the image of a state of law, the US has no other choice than prosecute, but the outcome will turn out as either: - a mistrial, followed by a strong attempt at burying the case somehow (probably with other events) - a non guilty verdict, with spin doctoring to display the whole thing as a demonstration of the fact that the US constitution and overall legal system is sound, - a "guilty" verdict, but with so much attenuating circumstances than there will be no significant sentence However, for Snowden, I doubt that he will be able to find a job again in his line of work, after breaking the "ethic rules". What security company would hire a (skilled even) security analyst (or whatever Snowden was actually doing) if he cannot keep it shut on the internal practices? The scope could widen to any entreprise actually.
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- Thiz 13y agoRunning away from lucifer to fall in the arms of beelzebub? Weird world.
- haakon 13y agoSnowden is going to land in Oslo airport, Norway and meet with the leader of our Pirate Party, before going on to his final destination which is supposed to be Iceland. Source, in Norwegian: https://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/uriks/Piratpartiet-Snowden-mellomlander-pa-Gardermoen-7238358.html https://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/uriks/Piratpartiet-Snowde...
- johansch 13y agoThere's a flight for OSL that leaves from SVO in 1 hour 40 mins (18:45 local time): http://info.flightmapper.net/flight/Aeroflot_SU_2534?date=2013-6-23 http://info.flightmapper.net/flight/Aeroflot_SU_2534?date=20...
- virtu 13y agoAmazing publicity, there are still a few hours before he lands in Norway then. Sunday is the best day to travel for him propably... Here is Google Translate of the above article: http://bit.ly/14RbV5Y http://bit.ly/14RbV5Y
- marvin 13y agoI wonder if this was an intentional leak. This was reported by the leader of Norway's Pirate Party on Twitter. With the misdirection regarding Cuba and Venzuela, I'm wondering whether he is actually headed for Iceland or somewhere else. Seems weird that they would publish something like this. Oslo seems like a risky place to land since Norway has historically been very open to requests from US officials. Is anyone able to get in touch with someone involved and see if the leak was intentional, and if not get in touch with Snowden's Wikileaks entourage? (I'm from Norway, btw). The latest flight leaving Oslo for Reykjavik today is Icelandair's FI325 at 21:55 local time.
- untog 13y ago"I don't want public attention because I don't want the story to be about me. I want it to be about what the US government is doing." "he fully expects the US government to attempt to use all its weight to punish him. 'I am not afraid,' he said calmly, 'because this is the choice I've made.'" http://m.guardiannews.com/world/2013/jun/09/edward-snowden-nsa-whistleblower-surveillance http://m.guardiannews.com/world/2013/jun/09/edward-snowden-n...